NVIDIA HairWorks tools released

NVIDIA is pleased to announce release of the NVIDIA HairWorks tool chain. This can be used
by artists to create realistic fur simulations such as those seen on Riley the Special Forces Dog in Call of
Duty: Ghosts and the Wolves in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. The tool chain includes 3ds Max and
Maya plug-ins as well as the HairWorks Viewer. NVIDIA also provides tutorial videos for each
component.

NVIDIA HairWorks is a component of NVIDIA GameWorks™. Simulation and rendering of fur in real-time
adds to the realism of animals and furry characters. HairWorks can run on any DX11 capable GPU.

The NVIDIA HairWorks tools were closely developed with artists resulting in a familiar, efficient and
easily learned work-flow. The grooming pipeline uses industry standard 3rd party tools for both Maya
and 3ds Max. The work-flow is close to a traditional VFX pipeline, the artist applies guide curves to a
growth mesh, grooms them with standard off the shelf grooming tools, then exports them to the HairWorks
Viewer for rapid iteration in real time.

Several game developers are already using NVIDIA’s HairWorks solution on titles in production.

NVIDIA HairWorks technology enabled us to create a more dynamic and immersive character experience.
We completed the integration of Nvidia's Hairworks with our rendering pipeline quickly. Our art team
found the art pipeline to be familiar and easy to learn resulting in fast iterations on assets.
HairWorks provided enough flexibility to achieve many types of assets ranging from long
hair to dense fur.

Balázs Török, Lead Engine Programmer, CD Projekt RED.

NVIDIA HairWorks is built on multiple simulation and rendering technologies that NVIDIA has developed since 2007. Below are a small set of links of the demos and research papers form NVIDIA that show the history of hair/fur rendering and simulation:

The windows binary SDK is in closed beta and will be released for free in a couple of weeks.
We also provide an option to license the source code. If you would like to get early access please contact us at: visualfx-licensing@nvidia.com.